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"I was so desperate, I had lost hope. Committing suicide seemed the only escape from the abuse, back then," Fatima* said in an interview earlier this month. "I didn't know how to handle the pain." A mother of eight, Fatima has been married for about two decades.

At only 19, Michelle Zeledón, from the north of Nicaragua, has been through a lot. She watched her father beat her mother, and endured years of his verbal abuse. "One time, during the Holy Week, my dad tried to kill my mother," she told UNFPA.

India - When a 13-year-old girl in the remote village of Darbhanga, in India's Bihar State, overheard her parents planning to marry her off to a 15-year-boy the very next day, she had little hope to stop it. Child marriage is a deep-rooted norm in her community.

The border between Bangladesh and Myanmar is the site of the world's fastest growing refugee crisis. Over 620,000 Rohingya refugees from neighbouring Rakhine State in Myanmar have arrived in Cox's Bazar District in just three months. With more refugees arriving every day, settlements are overflowing.

Dalia Asinde was married 16 years ago in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. She was 22 and in love, she said. But her husband soon became violent - and relentless. She lost count of the beatings, insults and torments he delivered.

"There are lots of setbacks in life, but what matters is standing up again," said 33-year-old Cojine*. She would know. She endured years of spousal abuse. It began four years ago, when a classmate asked her to marry him. She agreed.

Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Montserrat and Saint Kitts and Nevis were today certified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as having eliminated mother-to-child transmission of HIV and syphilis.

Amman, 25 November 2017 The United Nations is calling for greater action to address gender-based violence and its prevention in Syria. "Gender-based violence continues to undermine the health, dignity, security and autonomy of its victims in Syria," Panos Moumtzis, the Regional Humanitarian Coordinator (RHC) for the Syria Crisis," said in marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Saturday.

At only 16 years old, Laura* has already experienced intimate partner violence. "For two years, I put up with verbal and even physical abuse," she said, referring to an ex-boyfriend. "It's one of the worst things I have ever experienced.